(vi) Conclusion.

It is incumbent upon the historian to provide an account of events that is consistent with the facts. When considering the facts relating to the deportation of the Jews of Rome Irving is open to charges of manipulation and willful misrepresentation. Hitler's intervention was not one which 'mitigated' the lot of the Jews. On the contrary it counteracted a concerted local attempt to save them and condemned them to extermination. Hitler's order was not a revision of Himmler's order but a forceful reaffirmation of it. Hitler surely knew that for the Jews to be deported from Italy 'as hostages' was their death warrant, whether it was to Mauthausen or whether this was simply a euphemistic deception on his part. Irving manipulates and falsifies the documentation, suppressing material which he knows runs against his case, in order to support a wholly untenable conclusion which in fact is the exact opposite of the real truth.